Click here to view the embedded video.

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I was cleaning through some old stuff and came across this user agreement for Chebucto Community Net. I had to print it and mail it to them with a photocopy of my ID or a personal cheque before they’d activate my internet account. Oh, 1998. You were SO last century.

[/nerd]

Slate V documents the entire process from start to finish, and shares their results:

Google TV Ads has a how-to on their website, too:

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I really enjoyed this Under Armour commercial

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Joshuah Bearman has an amazing article in Wired about Gerald Daniel Blanchard, a bonafide master thief who just happened to be Canadian. The entire article is a must-read. Here’s an excerpt:

Blanchard targeted a half-dozen banks over the next few years. He’d get in through the air-conditioning ductwork, at times contorting his body to fit inside really tight spaces. Other times, he would pick the locks. If there were infrared sensors, he’d use IR goggles to see the beams. Or he’d simply fool the sensor by blocking the beam with a lead film bag.

He assembled an arsenal of tools: night-vision cameras, long-range lenses, high-gain antennas that could pick up the feeds from the audio and video recorders he hid inside a bank, scanners programmed with the encryption keys for police frequencies. He always had a burglary kit on hand containing ropes, uniforms, cameras, and microphones. In the Edmonton branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia, which he hit in 2002, he installed a metal panel near the AC ducts to create a secret crawl space that he could disappear into if surprised by police.

Such evasive action was never required, however, in part because Blanchard had also memorized the mechanics of the Mas-Hamilton and La Gard locks that many banks used for their ATMs. (These are big, complicated contraptions, and when police later interrogated Blanchard, they presented him with a Mas-Hamilton lock in dozens of pieces. He stunned them by reassembling it in 40 seconds.)

Blanchard also learned how to turn himself into someone else. Sometimes it was just a matter of donning a yellow hard hat from Home Depot. But it could also be more involved. Eventually, Blanchard used legitimate baptism and marriage certificates — filled out with his assumed names — to obtain real driver’s licenses. He would even take driving tests, apply for passports, or enroll in college classes under one of his many aliases: James Gehman, Daniel Wall, or Ron Aikins. With the help of makeup, glasses, or dyed hair, Blanchard gave James, Daniel, Ron, and the others each a different look.

Over the years, Blanchard procured and stockpiled IDs and uniforms from various security companies and even law enforcement agencies. Sometimes, just for fun and to see whether it would work, he pretended to be a reporter so he could hang out with celebrities. He created VIP passes and applied for press cards so he could go to NHL playoff games or take a spin around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with racing legend Mario Andretti. He met the prince of Monaco at a yacht race in Monte Carlo and interviewed Christina Aguilera at one of her concerts.

The stuff this guy got involved in is pretty incredible, and there’s no way that his story doesn’t eventually get turned into a Hollywood feature. Again, definitely read the whole article. It’s better than most fiction.

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From Rolling Stone: The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League

Rolling Stone had a great article back in June, 2009, about a girl named Esther Reed who stole a missing girl’s identity, “Brooke Henson,” to start a new, better life for herself – one that included enrolment at Harvard University and Columbia University.

When police finally caught wind of what Esther was doing, they obviously suspected her of being a serial killer and international spy, and she soon found herself on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

A portion of the article that describes the thinking of the police officer in charge of the investigation:

Using Fleischmann’s information — including the cellphone records — Campbell uncovered her pre-Cal State identity, “Natalie Fisher.” He also ran the name “Esther Reed” through the National Crime Information Center database and discovered that she was listed as a missing person. Campbell sent a photo of “Brooke Henson” to Washington police, who showed it to the Reed family. They confirmed it was Esther. It was their first indication in seven years that she was still alive.

Campbell struggled to make sense of the facts. What could Esther Reed’s motivation possibly be? Was she a drug courier, as Fleischmann suggested? Or, just maybe, could she have murdered Brooke Henson and the other girls she impersonated? “I thought, ‘Man, she might be a serial killer,’” recalls Campbell. Then one day, while reading the hundreds of pages of instant messages that Kyle Brengel had turned over, his eyes lit on a passage in which Esther expressed keen curiosity about a term paper the cadet was writing about tactical troop movements. In another exchange, she told Kyle that she’d love to be James Bond — that being a spy would be her dream job.

Of course, Campbell concluded: Esther Reed was a spy.

If Campbell had learned anything from his time in the Coast Guard, it was that threats lurk everywhere. Everything started falling into place: the military boyfriends, the plastic surgery, the wire transfer from Europe, the false passport. Campbell could see now that Esther had been infiltrating military intelligence at its roots, by seducing young cadets at West Point who would become tomorrow’s military leaders.

“It’s Cold War spy stuff, the same thing the Soviet Union did to us for 50 years!” says Campbell, still excited by his theory. “They’d have some girl go in, have sex with them. Did you ever see the movie The Good Shepherd? It’s exactly like that. Ten years from now, the guy is going up for his first star as a general, and he’s on the Joint Chiefs of Staff or something. The guy gets a package, it has a movie in it, and it’s ‘You work for us now.’ That’s classic espionage.”

Campbell notified the Secret Service and the Army. The manhunt was on.

A regular Columbo, this guy. It’s always surprising to me how easily suspicious people can get. What’s that? She stole someone’s identity? Get me the Pentagon! I’ve found a Russian.

…oh…she’s just a confused kid from South Carolina…right…that was my second guess. First guess: Russian. Second guess: confused kid.

My third guess?

Mermaid.

…the evidence supports my theory.

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Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, a New Zealand-based artist, has an art project called Little Man Protest, where, according to this interview by Isaac Hindin Miller, he “creates socially conscious and interactive artworks using audience participation through social networking mediums.”

More from Isaac’s interview on Shahriar’s project:

The Little Man Protest is inspired by previous artworks of mine from the World Art Collective where I used social networking to promote interactive artworks. This year I’m using Twitter and an online blog along with Facebook. The Little Man Protest is a series of miniature public sculptures. I wanted to take part in this miniature sculpture craze so I built these little red men, which are holding up signs of protest. They’re protesting about war and peace. The quote I’ve used is “When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace.” I wanted to stick them in very public places and so people either notice them or they don’t. If they do notice, I wanted that quote to plant a momentary seed in their chaotic day, to stop time just for a few seconds.

And later on there’s this little tidbit:

When the little men do get destroyed there’s a comical aspect to it, because when a protest ends it always leaves its mark, and with this artwork it leaves a physical mark because the feet of the little men are attached to the ground still, I’ve super glued them to the ground, so there’s a commemoration round the city where you’ll find little red feet.

As noted in the interview, the artist has set up a blog for the project, which includes this note:

Little man protest is about creating miniature style art in public spaces. In this instance they are tiny protestors commenting on the quote, “When a thought of War comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of Peace.” I used a quote of personal reflection with the aim of transforming daily thoughts of negativity into positive thoughts of social action and dialogue. The scale of the artwork has a humour element to it since they are tiny little red men. People vieiwing it may or may not take it seriously. But the message the artwork conveys with the quote is very real and that message is Peace…

I will be placing these sculptures in different places around Auckland City, New Zealand, over the next several weeks. I will be messaging people in real time through the process of text messaging to Twitter.com once the artwork is live and can be viewed. These artworks are meant to be a one day sculptural performance protest. And like all protests it can end with a positive note or a negative one depending on what the viewer takes from the quote.

Here’s a sample of the protest thus far:

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I can’t wait to get old.

First, the talk is a pretty good one, with Bill Gates talking about the importance of reducing our CO2 emissions.

But second, and as more of an Easter egg, when presented with the need to show a photo that represented the entirety of earth’s human population, he turned to a well-known photo of Baha’i volunteers serving at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa, Israel, presumably because the people in the photo represent a cross section of the world’s races and cultures.

Here’s the talk, and the photo of the Baha’is pops up at the 4:29 mark. Fun

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So enjoy this video, but please remember: meese kill.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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